Tuesday 25 September 2012

The Job Hunt Starts With A Whimper

I should preface this whole thing by saying that the job that I currently have (full time lab-based teaching of anatomy to science and medicine students) is far and away the best job I have ever had. However, it is still unclear whether my position will be available next year. This is partly due to the arrival of a new HoS, a lack of clarity over the availability of funding, and the small fact that universities cannot award consecutive full time academic contracts without it then rolling into an ongoing position. With the funding situation still up in the air, it would therefore be a brave/foolhardy decision to appoint full time ongoing staff in the knowledge that they can't then be easily gotten rid of when students and/or money dry up.

Ideally I would want to stay where I am, but with the situation as it is right now I am starting to shop around. I would like to stay in a teaching-only position, but the nature of academia at the moment is that the number of non-research academic positions available are somewhere between zero and none. Why this is the case is a rant for another occasion.

Now, I'm pretty freaking proud of this application. I think its style is pretty well spot on- a nice mix of relaxed and formal- and my points well made, but for whatever reason it didn't even get me shortlisted for an interview. Nevertheless, I'm still posting it here because I stand by it as a solid piece of writing and a damn fine application letter. I've redacted anything that may breach confidentiality, but the message should still be there.

Anyway, without further ado, here it is.



Hello XXXXXXXXXXX, I am putting this forward as my official application for the position of Lecturer at XXXXXXXX University that you are currently advertising (Position Number XXXXXXX). Below you will find my itemised response to the Key Selection Criteria. PhD degree in a Biomedical Science discipline, relevant to allied health educationI completed and obtained my PhD in Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia in 2009 before moving to Melbourne to pursue a career in biomedical research. My PhD investigated the genetic and proteomic basis governing the formation of the maternal-fetal barrier in utero. After an 8-month stint as a postdoctoral research officer at the Burwood campus of Deakin University examining the genes responsible for controlling muscle wasting, I commenced a 12-month postdoc at the Baker International Diabetes Institute. This position involved developing and troubleshooting a technique of in vitro culture of intact mouse muscle fibres, and their treatment with viral vectors for delivery of gene therapies. Demonstrated strong record of teaching experience in a tertiary environmentIn January 2012 I took up a 12-month contract with the XXXXXX XXXX to teach all Gross Anatomy courses. This involves helping 2nd and 3rd year Science and Biomedical science students, and 1st year postgraduate Medical and Physiotherapy students in a workshop styled setting, and demonstrating and supervising the dissection of human cadaveric material to 3rd year Science/Biomed students. Semester 1 primarily involved appendicular anatomy, while semester 2 is more focused on the thorax, abdomen, pelvis, pharynx and larynx, with smatterings of neuroanatomy. However my role is not limited to just during semester. Throughout the year I have been creating a pool of multiple choice questions for use in future examinations, marking mid- and end-of-semester exam papers, prosecting anatomical specimens for use in laboratory classes, and been in charge of the logistics of the dissection classes.
My first exposure to tertiary teaching was at the University of Western Australia during my Honours year in 2004. During this year and the 4 subsequent years of my PhD candidature I taught gross anatomy, embryology, histology, cell biology and molecular biology techniques to second and third year science students using cadaveric material, laboratory equipment, models, diagrams and good old fashioned markers on a whiteboard. Additional to this I also delivered tutorials to Medicine and Physiology students.
In between completing my PhD, waiting for it to be assessed, and starting my first postdoctoral position I gained some extra teaching experience in the University of Melbourne Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology (as it was then known) supervising tutorial sessions for second year cell and molecular biology students. After the end of my second postdoctoral position I returned and taught this material again in Semester 1 2011, before picking up some extra casual teaching in the same department, this time returning to material similar to that which I taught during my postgraduate days in Perth.I strongly believe that a conversational style of teaching is best suited to a laboratory setting, and have come to the opinion that this style of teaching provides the students with a better understanding of the core concepts involved in the material than a purely didactic tutorial style of teaching. I have developed my own style of conversational teaching- asking questions in answer to questions to stimulate the student’s own critical and logical thinking rather than relying on rote memorization of course material. I do of course realise that not all students respond to this style of teaching, and so am able to alter my style into a more didactic fashion so that they too can maximise their learning experience. And for this reason I prefer to teach in groups no larger than 12, moving fluidly from small group to small group to facilitate every student’s learning while at the same time encouraging them to become self-directed and in control of their own education.So to summarise, I have extensive experience teaching in the tertiary education sector. This has predominantly been to multidisciplinary undergraduate students, but of late this has expanded to include postdoctoral students in Medicine, and more relevantly to the advertised position- Physiotherapy. I am committed not only to delivering the material the student’s have to learn for their examinations, but also encouraging and moulding them to think for themselves in a critical and logical manner. Proven ability, commitment and passion for engaging in research activities and scholarship, particularly in educationMy ability, passion and commitment to research can be seen through my experiences as a postdoctoral researcher at both Deakin University and Baker IDI, and throughout my PhD candidature (see CV for more details). In each position I was responsible for the day-to-day running of my projects and had significant influence over the directions that projects took. For me there was nothing quite like discovering something new for the first time, brainstorming the possible repercussions, and planning and executing the next series of experiments. The thrill of discovery was something that kept me coming back for more.But to be perfectly honest, while the pursuit of the new held me in thrall, I have come to realise that tertiary education is my true passion. I love interacting with the students and the feeling of satisfaction that I get at being able to not only strengthen their understanding of the workings of the human body but to also strengthen their abilities to think critically to answer their own questions. I believe that this constant critical thinking should be a central tenet of a tertiary education- to prepare graduates to face and solve the problems that will confront them in their lives to come.
Tertiary education is something that I have become particularly passionate about, and I take on any opportunity to improve my own teaching ability, whether it is feedback directly from students, or through the confidential quantitative student evaluations that occur regularly during and at the end of semester. I am not afraid to tackle my own shortcomings, and realise that the act of teaching is not about me, but about the students to whom I am teaching. Possess a high level of interpersonal skills and demonstrated ability to work independently and as part of a teamI am a highly organised self-starter and perfectly content to work independently of others, however the provision of a great educational environment depends on a whole team of educators. Indeed in my current position there are anywhere between 6 and 15 people teaching each laboratory class at any one time, and the make up of these teaching teams constantly changes according to the course, the demands of the material and the availability of suitable demonstrators. As such I have adapted to working with a continually varying team, and feel that I am a welcoming and supportive presence for all of my peers.
I am also content to drive my own work independently of others, and at times even prefer to hunker down away from any distractions and simply get things done. I possess a rare ability to completely cut out anything that is happening around me and focus entirely at what I am doing. My wife still finds it unbelievably peculiar that I can be working away at something while she talks about me with her friends, and I do not hear what is being said because I am simply too engrossed in what I am doing.As a part of the core group of demonstrators I have naturally taken on a more senior role in the larger team and am developing my own leadership skills through overall running and supervision of select classes. Furthermore I am also in charge of setting up the material for anatomical workshops, preparing the cadaveric material for dissection classes and making sure that classes run smoothly and without complications for either staff or students.Outside of the teaching context I understand the importance of teamwork through my role as part of a Sunday-league soccer team (Centre Back for Old Hill Wanderers AFC). Indeed we managed to win the league title and gain promotion to the above league in only our second year of existence. We did this through effective communication and everybody fulfilling their specified role within the team, each cog playing its part in a larger machine. Demonstrated ability to stimulate, actively engage and educate a given audienceWhen teaching, I take it upon myself to engage each student and make sure they are getting the most out of the material provided. If I feel that any student is holding back and not actively engaging with the material then I make sure to make eye contact and explain the material again in a slightly different way in an attempt to help the student understand. I tend to take it as a slight on my teaching abilities if a student has trouble with a concept, or is too shy or embarrassed to ask for additional help. I always try to be approachable and unintimidatory, and encourage students to ask questions. In short I like to create an open, collaborative learning environment. I think it is vital that every student has the opportunity to listen to, look at, touch and question the material, and I make sure that resources designed for each of these styles are made available to students in every class I teach.Most of my teaching experience has been at the small group level. However I have presented information and my own research to scientists on both the national and international stage. On a lighter note I have public speaking experience through my role as master of ceremonies at all three of my soccer team’s end-of-season awards nights. Capacity to work positively and cooperatively with students, internal and external teams and agenciesBy my very nature I am non-confrontational and always try to interact with people in a positive manner and as equals. I find that this helps people to approach situations honestly and without feeling the need to establish a hierarchical system of power, thereby helping to avoid any situation where the emphasis of power is shifted from the collaboration to the individual, and thus conflict. Invariably results are maximised when everybody works together cooperatively, and I strive for this always to be the case, whether it be teaching through a technique of constant questioning, working as part of an educational team, or dealing with commercial scientific companies. However if any friction does develop, the student’s education will always be my priority. Current experience with Bioscience education to students in Allied Health coursesMy experience in teaching to Allied Health students comes mainly in the form of Physiotherapy students at the University of Melbourne. I can attest that they are always looking for the practical applications of their course material, and their singular focus has helped me to always consider the practical applications of what I teach as I find that this is often an underutilised source of material in ‘traditional’ tertiary education. It provides an additional aspect from which to view the material, which can help students to think about how the material applies in a practical setting outside of the classroom, or to their own lives.
 Experience with multi-campus delivery of educational programsI understand that this position calls for work to be performed across multiple campuses, and am prepared to do so as required. I hope to be given the opportunity to figure out the unique challenges this presents some time in the future. Alas, I have no experience with criteria 9 and 10. If it makes any difference I undertook 2 years worth of sports science units (biomechanics and exercise physiology) as an undergrad back at the University of Western Australia… Anyway, thank you for taking the time to consider me for the Lectureship at Monash. I believe that I am the best fit for the position not only because of my considerable experience in teaching bioscience and bioscience-related university students the wonders of the human body, but also because of my constant reflexivity in always questioning whether my actions and style is providing the students with their best possible learning experience. I am committed to providing the best possible education objectives and outcomes for the next generation of health care professionals.
 Thanks again, Dr Lloyd White

Saturday 11 August 2012

A letter to the gas company


Dear Mr/s TRU Energy (if that even is your real name),
It has now been two years since we first contacted you about getting billed for our gas usage at XX XXXXXXXXXXXXX, Collingwood 3066. We aren’t writing to you because we don’t think we should have to pay you anything (after all, we contacted you, not the other way around), it’s that we only want to pay what is fair. In the two years we have been pursuing this matter we have variably been quoted bills ranging from a few hundred dollars to $4889.63. Indeed, on June 12 2012 we were issued with a gas account for $1040.25 (based on an estimated meter reading), including the deduction of just a tick under $4000 from the ‘Opening Balance’. I have no idea how you arrived at this figure, but I have no choice but to trust that you know what you are doing.

But then, with the due date of this bill approaching, we receive another letter from you stating that you have “fixed this now and your bills will be sent to you within the next 10 days”. As I’m sure you can appreciate, we put the previous bill aside and waited expectantly for, after 2 years of phfaphfing around, this whole saga to draw to an end.

But alas, no. What should arrive in the mail this evening (26 July 2012) but a bill for $2,888.12? Oh no. Surely there must be some mistake. You promised this was all going to be resolved soon, but this charade just seems to go on and on and on.

But, I am nothing if not an optimist. I foresee a light at the end of the purgatorial tunnel and we can finally get out of this holding pattern of painfully mixed metaphor and resolve this debacle. For you see, this new bill also contains details of what are supposedly the previous three bills, so we have an ongoing record of exactly how much gas we are supposed to have used, and in which months we used it. For instance, in April/May 2012 we used 24.82Mj of gas per day (2098.11Mj). In Feb/March 2012 we used 34.39Mj of gas per day (1489.79Mj). Included was also a bill for June/July 2012 for 3.85Mj of gas used per day, but I’m prepared to disregard this figure as we moved out of this address early in June.

So, from February to June 2012 we demonstrably used a grand total of 3587.9Mj of gas. At your usage charge for this period of $0.014715/Mj, plus your supply charge of $32.24 for 2 months, this works out to be $117.28 for 4 months worth of normal gas usage. If anything, that seems even less than what an average couple could expect to pay for 4 months of gas. After all, if the amount of something you are actually using is less than the service, you’re probably doing alright.

But, clearly, $117.28 << $2888.

So what should be there, taking up so much space in the bar chart on page 3? Oh wait, that’s supposedly our gas usage for Dec 2011- Jan 2012, weighing in at an astonishing 57 times greater than our usage for the very next period of Feb/March 2012. 57 TIMES! That’s 1974.82Mj! That’s $27.38! PER! DAY! OMG! WTF!

Oh wait, silly me. I forgot that was the period in which I converted our gas system into a flamethrower and started operating a hot air ballooning business out of our kitchen! /sarc

Now here I should probably take a detour and mention that some 18 months after initially making contact with you to send us our gas bill, you finally arranged for a meter reader to come to our house one fine sunny Saturday morning in early summer 2011. The gas meter is, for some reason known only to the owner, buried inside a wall. It is located in the corner behind a kitchen bench, and a layer of plasterboard is nailed in place to cover it. Only while laying cockroach baits in darkened recesses did we happen to stumble across it. And yet as long as it took us to find it, it somehow took you even longer to come around and read it so that you could get paid the money you rightly earned by connecting and supplying gas to our humble, rented abode.

So before December 2011, the gas usage that you claim we used is nothing more than an estimate based upon what I can only imagine to be average usage figures for similar sized homes in similar areas. But even a casual parsing of the bar charts that accompany each bill show that the average usage is far above what has been demonstrated to be our actual usage, even when seasonally adjusted.
Now instead of getting up on our high horses and demanding that we don’t have to pay a cent, or threatening to go to the consumer ombudsman, or worse, Today Tonight, we are prepared to try to strike a compromise.

What we propose is as follows:

We are prepared to pay for 9 months of gas, as is our obligation “under government regulations that apply in your state”.

We will pay at the same rate as you had calculated for the period Feb-May 2012. That is $0.014715/Mj.

The same service fee per billing period ($32.24 for every 2 months) will be paid.

Our usage is to be calculated at 50Mj per day, a figure significantly higher than our highest rate of actual usage (34.39Mj/day for Feb/March 2012).

Now if my calculations were correct, that would be 50Mj/day multiplied by 274 days equals 13,700Mj of gas used.

13,700Mj multiplied by $0.014715 equals $201.60 in gas usage.

Service fee of $32.24/2 months. $32.24 times 4.5 is $145.08.

$201.60 plus $145.08 equals $346.68.

Let’s be generous and make it a rounded $350, payable in a lump sum.

Let us know if you agree.



Saturday 11 February 2012

Synopsis- Between Here and the Sky


When people think of science they think of middle-aged men with crazy hair and white coats pouring some coloured liquid from one beaker into another for no good reason other than it’s a catchy image of something that may indeed save the world. But then people would only be partly right. For while science is conducted by people wearing white coats and often sport wild hair and a glazed half-mad look in their eye, they tend not to be middle aged men but 25-35 year old people of both sexes with real life problems and, dare I say it, real life personalities. And rather than saving the world by splashing coloured liquids around the place, their words tends to be more of the kind that carefully and glacially progresses the limits of what we know so that hopefully what they are doing may someday help in the treatment of some disease or other. Between Here and the Sky follows such a life- a 20-something scientist (Marshall) struggling with his PhD and what it all means in the broad scheme of things, and his search for something more to his life than his day-to-day life in the laboratory. Basically, he’s human. Then one night at a brother of a friend’s party he meets Hazel, a 20-something aspiring writer with eponymous eyes that leads him into the diametrically opposite world of the artist.

Meanwhile, generations earlier, Henry is arriving in Australia as a child of migrant English workers. He narrates his family’s journey into the middle of the tall forest, and their fight with the landscape as they try to establish a farm in harsh and unfamiliar territory. We see his father’s own peculiar methods, his brother’s (Albert) special kindred touch with the land, and how they transform the impenetrable bush into fertile agricultural land. Their wealth accumulates, and the arrival of Henry’s nephew Phillip expands the dynasty even further.

The last act provides a merging of the two previous narratives. It deals with the internal conflict within the major protagonists regarding death, and more broadly the role we play in life and how we must inevitably confront and comes to terms with our own mortality. It is not macabre, but exists as an elegiac meditation on death and our right to die in the manner in which we want.

Within this narrative, Marshall and Hazel retreat to the countryside in an effort to escape the confines of the city. Marshall grew up in the country, and even after his family moved away he would still go and work for Phillip and his wife Beth during university holidays. Phillip asks Marshall for advice regarding his own death- specifically the most peaceful way to do it- rationalising that as Marshall is involved in animal research he would know the most ethical way of administering death. Thereafter, the four main protagonists wrestle with the reality of Phillip’s intentions and how it affects them.

So, as a whole, ‘Between Here and the Sky’ is a life story, a love story, and a death story. While it explores themes as diverse as death, love, family, reincarnation, individuality, science, art, and the perceived conflict between science and art, the uniting undercurrent is of our primordial connection with the environment around us and how when all is said and done we are powerless to stop the turning of the earth. It makes the case that we are merely a small part of the world in which we live, and that a connection with the natural world is essential for our wellbeing, and flows from the hypothesis of Biophilia developed by the scientist and philosopher Edmund O. Wilson, which argues that humans instinctively seek connections with the rest of nature, and need this connection in order to gain fulfilment.